


Voidfish (Reprise)

by inkedinserendipity



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death, but some people, do die, faerun gets ate, i have a thing(tm) for naming works something (reprise) don't at me, speaking of which, the birds do have the light, this whole thing was written while i listened to voidfish plural and honestly i think it shows, well. sort of. not completely, wink wink wink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 12:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16723035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: Angus McDonald is many things — the boy detective, for one. The youngest member of the Bureau of Balance. The unofficial little brother of the THB, however Taako insists he's actually their mascot. He’s a researcher, and a scholar. He's not a fighter. He’s not a hero.But he can save the world all the same.





	Voidfish (Reprise)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt: "Can you write a fic where the IPRE abandon Faerûn and Angus fights against the Hunger from the inside?" 
> 
> Basically what it says on the label, folks. In this fic, Angus McDonald saves the world.

“We’ve got two choices,” Barry says. Inside his hood, the faint light that makes up his face wavers with exhaustion. “Just two choices.” **  
**

His proclamation is met with silence. Angus looks hopefully to Taako, because if anyone can work out a solution to this, Taako can! But…his mentor is looking toward the sky, arms crossed and face carefully, carefully blank.

His heart sinks. He looks to Taako’s twin, Miss Lup, but she has nothing either, nothing except for an angry fire curling in her palms. To Lucretia, who meets his gaze and holds it for several seconds before her face crumples.

“Please don’t leave us,” Angus says, for the second time that day. He steps imploringly toward Davenport. It’s strange, to see the mettle of command in Davenport’s face, but with his memories of flight restored he does look every inch a legendary captain. “Please, sir. We can’t win this fight alone.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Davenport says, and he’s so tired. He sounds like he wants to be sympathetic, but just doesn’t have it in him. Angus has met people like him before. Witnesses to awful crimes. Husbands who have lost their partners; parents who have lost their child. “Your plane is just another one of hundreds, kid. I’m sorry.”

“No, it isn’t,” says Magnus. “It isn’t, we can’t just leave them here!”

“Then what do you propose we do?”

“Fight!” Magnus says, voice breaking. “We stay and we fight!”

“We stay and we fight, we die,” Davenport says evenly. He turns toward the ship. “I’m taking the Starblaster. All of you, to me - we’re getting out of here.”

“Davenport - ”

“ _Now_ , Lucretia.”

She flinches. Barry looks at Lup, then at an eyeless Merle, and takes Lup’s hand. “You ready?” Despite her lack of face, Lup looks distraught, lich form flickering. “C’mon, Lup,” Barry says, and tugs her toward the gangplank. 

“Angus,” Lucretia says, and Angus tears his gaze away from the silver ship to look up at  her. “Angus, I - I wish there was something I could do, I thought - ”

“Me too,” says Angus, and smiles for her. “But it’s all right, Miss Lucretia! You’re all very smart. I’m sure you’ll figure something out soon.”

She looks torn. “I - we will, I know, but - gods, Angus, I’m so sorry. I never wanted it to end like this.”

“You had a very smart plan,” Angus tells her quietly. “I’m sorry it couldn’t work.”

Lucretia sniffles, a little bit. It’s odd; faced with his own impending demise, Angus feels nothing. She opens her mouth, like she has something else to say, but instead she kneels in front of him. “I can’t promise we’ll come back,” she says, voice shuddering, “but if we can, I swear, Angus, we will try to come find you.”

“That’s a lot of hay in one stack, Miss Lucretia,” Angus says, and gives her a hug. “But I’m a very bright needle. I’m sure you’ll figure out a way.”

She holds him for a long, long time. When she stands, he catches her dashing at her eyes before boarding the ship.

Then it’s just him, and a silent trio of men who he’s come to see as family.

“Well, I guess this is it, sirs,” he says quietly. The numbness slips away as the four figures board the ship, as he thinks  _this is it_. Panic is beginning to bubble inside of him. A dozen feet away, a huge tendril of Hunger slams into the moonbase, tearing a hole through its metallic skeleton.

From the tendril spill dozens then hundreds of soldiers, all wearing a hundred different faces in a hundred different sizes. Angus takes a deep breath and draws his wand. This is it. This is the last time he will see them.

“Before you go, I w-wanted to say thank you.” He allows himself a brief smile, willing himself not to cry. He can’t let the last time the three of them see him be him being baby, of course! “I - even though you did a lot of goofs on me, and Taako,” he says with a small laugh, “I know you stole my s-silverware, sir, but I - I had a really good time with you. With…with all of you.”

Behind them, Taako’s sister sticks her head out the Starblaster and shouts at the three of them. None of them respond. This is the last chance he’s going to get. Angus forces himself to tear his gaze away from the impending Hunger, and grins as best he can at the three of them. His chest hurts. “I love you.”

Magnus looks at him, pained. Then his expression smooths into determination. “I don’t know about you guys,” he says quietly, drawing his sword, “but I’m not going. I’m going to protect Angus for as long as I can.”

Merle, surprisingly, chuckles. He pulls out a familiar Bible and flips expertly through it, places a hand on a page. “‘Course we’re not,” he says. Magnus smiles at him.

A hand rests on his shoulder, and Angus half-turns to find Taako’s gaze drop from the sky above toward him. Taako doesn’t say anything; he unstraps the glaive from his back with one hand and holds it in front of himself and Angus, straight-backed and tight-lipped.

He glances over his shoulder, then, and Angus follows his gaze to Magnus, then Merle. The three of men hold each other’s gaze for a long, long time. 

Then they nod, and in one concerted motion, circle him with weapons drawn.  

Angus, hands shaking, pulls out his own wand. “Thank you, sirs,” he says, and dashes at his tears.

“Of course, Ango,” says Magnus. He shoots Angus a brief, pained smile. “We couldn’t leave you like this.”

Behind them, the silver ship lifts into the air, just in time to avoid another tendril of darkness that pierces downward from the sky. Some of the tension bleeds from their shoulders as the ship spears away, and as one, the three of them draw tighter around Angus, back to back to back.

Then the Hunger is upon them, and the three Reclaimers spring into action. Instantly, the area around Angus is a blaze of flashing steel, of magic winds and holy light, a protective barrier that keeps the Hunger at bay.

The synchronicity of a hundred years is obvious in the way they fight. Merle casts a barrier just short enough for Magnus to leap across, driving opponents into its fiery walls with decisive strokes of his sword. Taako carves a swathe of enemies out of Merle’s way with a Whirlwhind, and Merle summons his angel to take advantage of the ensuing destruction; Taako blocks a sword with the hilt of his glaive and Magnus is beside him within seconds, lopping the head of the assailing soldier off with his sword, flaming tip carving a fiery arc through the Hunger’s forces.

Angus helps where he can, but the three of them keep a tight ring around him, driving back the waves of Hunger with fierce determination. He sees Merle take a hammer to the shoulder and keep casting, seemingly unperturbed; he sees Taako get hit in the head and fall before springing back to his feet, practically spitting with rage.

The first glimmers of white light appear around their heads.

“Shit,” Magnus spits, wiping sweat off his eyes, and curses again when a swing of his sword fails to connect. He tugs the Chance Lance from its sheath, hurls it, and swears again when it, too, passes harmlessly through his foe. A four-pawed beast swipes at him, and stops in confusion when the blow moves right through Magnus’s shield. “Ango, I’m so sorry, we have to go - get out of here,  _run_ , the Hunger will leave once it realizes the Light’s not here anymore, you just have to survive for a little bit longer. Go, Angus,  _go!_ ”

“Okay,” Angus says, watching them fade in front of him. He can’t quite convince his feet to move. Besides, where would he go? He is encircled by foes with no escape. 

A blade jabs through Merle’s chest and Angus bites down on an instinctive scream that shudders to a halt when Merle fails to so much as jerk forward. Magnus backs up, weapons sheathed, and tries to wrap his arms around him, but Angus just passes through him. Angus notices with surprise that Magnus is crying. “It’s okay, sir,” he says. He mimes hugging back, and even though he has no substance, feels a little bit better. “I’ll find somewhere to hide! I’m a very clever little boy. I’ll be okay.”

“I trust you,” says Magnus. The red of his handkerchief burns starkly against the darkness behind him, even as the rest of the color in his body fades.

“I know,” he says, and those tears come spilling over. So much for not crying. He’s still smiling, through, which has to count for something! “I know, it’s okay, don’t blame yourselves, I’ll be fine - ”

“Agnes,” Taako says quickly, cutting him off. His glaive in his hands, and he’s listing heavily to one side, a gash torn in his leg. Merle’s hands on his Bible are shaking, brows furrowed in concentration, resisting the call of their silver ship. “We’ll come back for you, kid,” he says, and Merle nods, and Magnus sobs, and Taako kneels in front of him one last time, hand coming up to rest weightlessly on Angus’s shoulder. “I don’t know how or when, but we’ll come back, I swear it. Do you hear me, Angus,  _I swear it_ , listen, we lo - ”

The light swallows them whole.

The space where the Reclaimers once stood is empty, leaving nothing between Angus and the horde of shadows threatening his world. He stares at the place where they fought for several long moments, their afterimages burned into his eyes.

“I love you too,” Angus whispers to the empty air, and lifts his wand one final time.

* * *

Angus is everything and nothing all at once. He is light and dark and green and blue and orange, black and white, shoved into one, existence where there should be nothing, stuffed full of too much and tearing at the seams. He is not alone and yet entirely isolated, contained and free, pushing forward to an unknowable something and confined by his own edges.

For a long time, Angus is nothing and everything and an indefinable something, but he is not Angus. He doesn’t know how long he is not Angus, but he knows that he is not Angus for a long, long time.

Then, in his peripheries, a flash of red.

He does not recoil, because he does not know how to be afraid. He looks toward it slowly, unconcerned, and feels…warm.

He  _feels_. 

“Hey, kiddo,” says a voice, familiar and unfamiliar, beloved but unknown, right in his ear. He looks up - does he have eyes? - and sees nothing but a vague streak of red and the outline of a woman. “What a lovely teal you are. Oh, but look at you! You’re still here, aren’tcha? Tenacious little bugger.”

He tries to comply, tries to look down, but has no eyes.  _Who are you_ , he tries to ask, but instead asks  _who am I?_

“A human boy, I think,” says the voice thoughtfully. It sounds like it should be loud and booming and laughing, but keeps itself soft to ward off the ears and eyes of their everything-prison. 

A touch on his forehead, gentle, and Angus remembers that he is Angus. He is a human boy, a detective, and he is very good at his job.

“There we go,” says the voice, warmly. It smells like cinnamon and coriander. It smells like a home he never knew on a plane he’s never been. “Y’know, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Who are you?” he asks, and succeeds this time. He has a voice. He has a voice!

“I was an elf, at one point,” says the woman. Though she has no proper face - none of them do - he can hear pride. Has he heard that sort of pride before? He thinks he has. “Good at cookin’.  _Very_ good at cookin’.”

A frisson pulls through them in the empty space, and the woman falls silent, through the ruby-red of her presence remains. The fear passes, though it hovers. “What’s your name?” she asks, boisterous voice at a whisper.

“Angus,” he says, and blinks. “I think?”

“Sounds about right,” she says. “Be quiet, Angus, and careful. Quiet and careful. You’re smart, aren’tcha? You’ll do well.” 

The red fades to a dim cinnamon color, smelling of fire and hearth, and just before it goes it says: “You’ll do well, Angus.”

* * *

Having his consciousness restored is somehow worse than not having it at all. He drifts from nowhere to nowhere within this place of nothing, aware that he was once a human boy and once had a family - a family of three? of many? - but that left him. That, for some reason,  _had_  to leave him, which does make a difference.

He drifts for an unknowable time before coming across two pinpricks of light, one purple and one orange. They’re soft, unlike the hard jagged streaks of blue and red of the Hunger, small auras of color that drift aimlessly within the infinite dark.

They reach out to him, twin voices of cheer in this dark place. “Hello,” says the purple one. The orange one murmurs an echoed greeting, tucking closer to the purple.

“Hello,” says Angus. “Who are you?”

“I am the Raven,” says the purple light.

“And I am the Ram,” says the orange light. They swirl around each other, locked in a harmonious orbit, but drift toward him as they speak. As they approach, Angus feels something he hasn’t felt in a long time - warm, and loved. If he could smile, he would; but he cannot, so he merely contents himself in that warmth. 

“My name is Angus,” says Angus, though quietly. There are ears everywhere in this place. “How did you find each other?”

“We were never lost,” says the Raven.

“We have always had each other,” says the Ram. Still they dance lazily around each other, and Angus gets the impression of hands on waists, foreheads pressed together, smiles curling up on lips. “Who are you looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Angus says, and doesn’t. Who is he looking for?

The orange light hums. “You will find them,” it whispers, voice quiet and gentle. That warmth brushes along his head, carding through his hair, and in that moment, Angus is happy.

* * *

It is another unknowable stretch before Angus hears music. He drifts toward it as best he can, lured further into the darkness the masterfully-woven sounds of a violin. The music embraces him like a hand on his shoulder, the crack in the spine of a beloved book, the jolt of triumph from a brilliant deduction.

“Oh,” says a voice, so deep green as to blend in with the forests outside, woven into the fabric of a nature destroyed by this awful place. “Hello.”

“Hello,” says Angus, and knows this voice. “Your name is Johann.”

The music stops, and the green light flares curiously at him. “Is it?”

“It is.” Angus doesn’t know how he knows this, but know he does. “Your name is Johann. You made music.”

“I can’t remember it.”

“Neither can I.” A pause. “But it was good.”

The music resumes, different this time - slow and solemn, swelling. “I called this piece Forgotten,” says Johann, voice mournful. “But I haven’t forgotten it.”

“It’s lovely.” Angus listens. “It sounds powerful.”

“It is,” Johann agrees. In this dark place, he plays and plays, and the music stays with Angus long after their spirits drift apart.

* * *

If entering the Hunger was like closing his eyes, to leave is to open them again. He wakes up to a room full of that same Hunger, the sickening flashes of red and yellow and green and blue, silhouetted always by inky blackness, but he feels. He - he has a body.

“Oh,” he says, and pats at his own body delightedly. He can think again! He has his little legs, a chest, and when his hands fly to his face he finds his glasses. “Oh, I’m back!”

“Sure are, kid,” says a voice, warm and scraping and full.

Angus looks up, and finds himself at one end of a long table. Sitting at the other end of that table is a dwarf.

Even though the dwarf is entirely devoid of clothes, Angus barrels straight at him. “Merle!” he cries ecstatically, and holds on as tightly as he can. Merle holds him back, burying Angus’s face in his shoulder. “I missed you so much, are you okay?”

“You’re askin’ me?” Merle laughs incredulously, and puts him back down. Angus is crying, of course, but he’s a little surprised to see Merle tearing up too. “You’re the one that got ate, kiddo. Are you doing okay?”

“I don’t know,” Angus replies truthfully. He forgoes the seat at the other end of the long, long table, and hops up onto the one closest to Merle. He has to clamber up to reach it, legs dangling off the floor. “I don’t know. It’s weird. I don’t know where I was, and I didn’t know who I was, until someone told me. Where was I? What - was that?” 

“The Hunger? Truth be told, kiddo, I don’t know either,” Merle sighs, and he looks old in a way he never has before. “You’d think I would, given I’ve….”

“That you’ve what?”

“That I’ve done this - well. No. ‘s nothin’, kid, just drop it.”

Angus drops it in favor of drinking in his surroundings proper. Wherever he is, the room is made entirely of this black opal, but there are no windows and no features save the table and the chairs surrounding it. “Where am I now?”

“’S called the Parley space. It was a negotiation tactic from one of the planes, oh, a coupla decades back.”

Angus hums, files that away. “How long has it been? Since Faerun?”

“Five years or so,” Merle says, and sighs. “We’ve been trying to work out how to beat the Hunger, but - ”

Eyes suddenly flare open around the walls. Merle stops and glares at them, bags heavy beneath his eyes. “No luck?” Angus guesses, and Merle shakes his head. “Let’s talk about something else,” he suggests, but beneath his curious demeanor he’s taking full advantage of his retained faculties.

The Hunger stretches. He knows this from his time within it. It folds itself ever outward, adding to its mass, and thrives off of growing. With every plane it grows larger and larger, more and more monstrous, but is never quite sated.

His friends can find the Light of Creation, the Hunger’s ultimate goal, the object toward which it is always reaching. Angus thinks back to his time inside the Hunger, steadily ignoring the way the recollections make his head hurt. Lost though he was to the nothing, he remembers the way it felt stuffed full, always straining to spread and grow. What the Hunger needs is to expand ever outward.

What would happen if the Hunger could no longer expand?

What would happen, not if the Hunger were shielded from its next target, but the rest of the world shielded from it?

Angus lets the idea sit, and listens attentively as Merle tells tales of the worlds the crew has visited since Faerun. Always on the edge of their conversation is the knowledge that the worlds he is describing are inside the Hunger, now, and the good times the crew had are gone. But Merle can’t keep up the pretense of relaxation forever, and as his weariness strains his wrinkles Angus wants the pretense gone, too.

Finally, and steeling himself, Merle says, “We miss you, kid.”

“I miss you too,” Angus says. “I mean, it’s kinda hard to feel when you’re just nothing! But even though I couldn’t really remember you when I was part of the Hunger, I miss you too.”

“Yeah.” Merle winces. “Yeah. Taako and Magnus, they - they didn’t take it great, kid. Took a little while for Taako to talk to any of us again.”

Angus frowns. “Don’t let him do that. Taako can’t teach me any more magic if he forgets it all!”

“Yeah, well,” Merle waves him off. “We got him to open up eventually. It was a bit, uh…” Merle searches for the right word, “dramatic? But. Me ‘n Lup managed.”

“How long did it take?”

Merle shakes his head. “A long time, kid, that’s all you gotta know.”

The childish parts of him wants to ask,  _how much did they miss him?_  He wants to ask,  _would he still have a place among them if they came back?_  Taako promised they would come back for him, and he trusts Taako implicitly, but not even Taako can save the world alone. 

But he does not ask, because Merle looks weary and tired and Angus loves him, and does not want him to hurt.

So instead, he nods, and stands. “Okay then,” he says. The idea marinating in the back of his mind turns, exposing a soft and fleshy underbelly. “There are a couple of things I want to say before this ends - how  _does_ this end?”

Merle laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. “Y’know, kid? I don’t know! Typically ends with me beefin’ it, but unless you’ve got plans I don’t know about we’ll just have to work somethin’ out.”

At Merle’s laugh, some of the eyes on the walls peek open. Angus ignores them. “Could you leave on your own?”

“Yeah, I s’pose so,” Merle sighs. “Guess I just gotta will myself outta here. But - c’mon, kid, let’s not think about that now. I’ve gotta be the best company you’ve had in years.”

“You are, sir,” Angus reassures him, thinking. “Though I’m not alone, not really. I met Johann for a little while, and he played me a song.”

“Did he now?”

Angus rather likes having his mind back. “Yeah,” he says absently. He’ll miss it when the Hunger eats him again, and he’s nervous about that part, but there are a couple of things he has to say. 

“Merle, please tell Taako and Magnus something for me,” he says. “Please tell them I love them too, and not to blame themselves. They did the best they could. All of you did,” he says, and pats Merle’s shoulder when those old eyes crinkle in sorrow. “Don’t do that, sir! I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt or anything.” 

That’s not technically a lie - he is whole, and physically unharmed, but he gets the feeling that if he could sleep he would have nightmares. Even now, the memory of being nothing and everything, compressed and tugged outward and greedy, wanting, tickles at the back of his mind and prickles along his stomach. He doesn’t like it. 

There are many things Merle wants to say, and he can see them all forming and fading on Merle’s lips, but Angus knows them all and he smiles at the warmth Merle can’t quite put into words. He’s trying, and Angus appreciates that more than he could ever say. “I know, sir,” he says, and pats his shoulder again. Merle was the only one he could ever pat on the shoulder - with Magnus and Taako, the most he could do was bury his face in their stomachs and hug their hips.

Angus’s palms start to sweat. The eyes around the room are closed now, but he knows they’re still listening. 

“I will,” says Merle, and he looks concerned, now. “Kid - ”

“Don’t,” Angus says. “Just let me finish, okay, sir?”

Merle frowns. “Okay, go for it, kiddo.”

Angus tries to open his mouth to speak, but no words come out. Anxiety crackles like lightning through his veins, burning like black fire, and he doesn’t want to think about what’s going to happen next. He doesn’t want to go back in there and become nothing again. 

If he tried to speak now, his voice would be unintelligible, cracking. So he stands still for a moment, fear starting to shake his shoulders, and before he can think better of it throws his arms around Merle for another hug.

This time, the returned embrace is instant. Angus clings on tightly, painfully aware, that this will be the last hug that he receives for a long, long time, and does not let himself cry.

“Hey, kid,” Merle says soothingly, patting his back. “Stay a while, why don’tcha? I know you gotta say some stuff, but why not say it in a couple hours. Pan help me, but even  _I_  have missed you,” Merle says, trying for a grin. 

“No, I have to go,” Angus says, and pulls back. If he stays for too much longer he’ll never leave. He doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t  _want_  to, the thought makes him feel sick, but - he has to. For the people who have become his family. 

“Merle, I need you to listen to me,” Angus says, and he’s trembling now, but he pins Merle’s gaze with his own. He hugs his arms against his chest and blurts, “Put up a shield around the Hunger.”

The room screams. The eyes snap open and arms tear from the walls and shoot toward him and the rest of his thought tumbles through his mouth in one breath: “The Hunger needs to  _consume_ , that’s what keeps it going, but if you put up the shield around it it won’t be able to consume and it’ll be cut off and you guys can -  _oof_ \- ”

“Kid!” Merle shouts, but arms of black opal yank him away, slamming him into the wall. He’s dazed, blinking as he looks around - _“Angus!”_

“Go, sir!” Angus shouts, just before arms reach from the wall and clamp over his mouth. It hurts, it  _hurts_ , the fingers are digging into his hips and his legs and his shoulders, but he shouts another muffled  _go!_  through the darkness. He bites his own lip as the fingers tear into him, and he hunches into himself,  _ow_ , but musters the strength to shoot Merle one last desperate look.

The cleric stares at him wide-eyed and horrified, lips pulled back in a grimace and arms outstretched, and for a moment Angus fears that Merle is going to try to pull him back. But after shouting one last thing - Angus can’t hear it, he can’t hear anything, his vision is blurring and his ears are ringing and that awful nothing is crawling up his legs, his arms, his shoulders - Merle begins to fade. Relief suffuses through Angus, and he goes limp in the Hunger’s grasp.

He did it.

Then he is sucked through the wall, eyes scrunched shut and tearing up, and sees nothing at all.

* * *

He isn’t himself often after that. The Hunger keeps him tightly confined; in this space, there is only darkness. There are none of the wandering spirits he encountered, not even the streaks of yellow or red that were omnipresent in the Hunger. If Angus could think, he would be terrified; but what little he had was stripped away from him after his stunt in the Parley space.

He isn’t himself at all for a long time. 

Then the Hunger parts before him, and he steps out onto the deck of a silver ship.

He is made of darkness, cloaked in the very black that once held him prisoner, but he has hands. He has hands and legs and arms and he’s holding a wand that is not his own. His mind is not his own, not yet - the five forms before him are cloudy and indistinct, and he  _hates_  them with a passion that is not his own, and like in a dream, a nightmare, he is moving forward with wand drawn. 

They look so, so tired. 

Then he hears a song.

It’s a string of seven notes, played with perfect precision and clarity on an old, well-loved violin. It cuts clear through the haze in his mind, and fills him with something he hasn’t had in a long time - himself. 

Before him is Davenport, at the helm. Lucretia, holding the Light in her hands and channeling it into the sky, eyes closed and brows narrowed.

And there, the three Reclaimers, perched atop the deck, weapons drawn and teeth gritted. There are cuts and bruises littered all over their faces, and Magnus is nursing a broken arm, Merle’s bible in tatters around him, Taako’s free hand holding his bloodied side. There is fear and resignation in their faces but more prominent is horror as they stare at him, expressions coated in anguish.

Behind them, the Bond Engine is smoking and broken. 

Alone among the tide of bodies pressing forward, Angus stops. “No,” he says, and is surprised to hear his own voice.

Behind him, the music swells. 

His friends might be out of spell slots, but he is not.

Made of black opal though he is, he leaps toward the front of the army and turns, faces the ranks of Hunger, draws his wand. Above him sound those seven notes, thrumming with immeasurable power, and as he fires his first spell he hits two shapes; two dryads, blooming flowers of orange and purple streaks coating their hair. They shake their heads as if confused, their features deepening with the intricate detail of bark, then join him. At his side they draw a whip and a hammer, readying themselves to attack.

Angus’s grin turns feral. His spells cut clean through the Hunger and he doesn’t know what he’s casting, he couldn’t put a name to the magic arcing from his wand and into the crowd, but each bolt spins with ribbons of pure green and blue light and sings with a thousand forgotten voices. 

“Hello,” Angus says.

The taller one laughs. “Hello, Angus.” The smaller one smiles, and hefts her hammer. The blades of the taller one’s whip glisten with thorns of green and blue.

They both plow into the fray. At first, Angus thinks they’re destroying the shadows, but he sees instead that the darkness flows off of the duo like water, blinking in the growing aura of orange and purple they project. One by one, the shadows step to the side, then change, curiously: from the mass begin to form familiar shapes that shake their heads and blink their eyes, features forming slowly on once-blank faces. 

The first has a bracer and a flask at his side, and when he comes to he whoops, laughs, and in his hand bounces a sphere shining with that same blue-green light that he hurls into the crowd. Then, a dragonborn and an Orc, silhouetted in green and gold much like the dryads of purple and orange already lost in the fray, who spring lithely to join Angus’s shield in front of the wounded Reclaimers. Then a hulking elemental of the earth and a bird fluttering over their head; then a drow woman wearing an apron and wielding a smoking wand, then an orc woman hefting a huge axe between her hands, and a tall man in a sharp suit wielding a scythe, and an elven woman with a bow and missing an eye and, finally, another stout elven woman with a shock of bright red haloing her head and a ladle in her hand, smelling of cinnamon and coriander. 

And ever above their head sound seven notes.

And on a plane that is not their own, the world fights back.

* * *

Angus wakes up.

He wakes up on a grassy lawn, blades of grass crinkling beneath his back. He sits up, and rubs his head, and looks around - and parked beside him is a silver ship. “Oh, cool,” he breathes, and blinks at the sound of his own voice.

“Pumpkin?” asks a voice above him. 

Angus looks up and  _beams._  “Hello, sir!” he says, and latches onto Taako’s waist. “I missed you so much!”

“Yeah, kid,” Taako says, patting his head. “Me too.”

“Bring enough for everyone, Ango?” interrupts a second voice, just as familiar as the first, and Angus extends a hand for Magnus as well. He’s hoisted up between four hands, then finds himself perched on one broad shoulder, sideburns tickling his knees. He’s laughing through his tears. He folds himself over Magnus’s head and hugs his crown close. “I missed you too, kiddo,” Magnus says, “all the time.”

“Me too,” says Angus, laughing, crying, “me too, I couldn’t remember you but I missed you, you were so warm - how did you  _do_ that?”

“We took your advice, kid,” says a voice below him, and Angus blinks downward to see Merle standing beside Magnus and Taako, grinning up at him. “Lucretia threw her shield around the Hunger. Turns out listening to you  _is_  a good idea every once in a while.”

“But not too often,” Taako drawls. His ears stand up straight against his hair. “Can’t let the kid’s ego grow too much, Merle.”

“I mean, he did help us save the world.”

“We woulda figured it out eventually.”

“Would we?” Magnus asks skeptically. “I mean, would we? We did have, like, a hundred and twenty years to try, and we failed every time.”

Angus giggles at the antics, and buries his face in Magnus’s hair. “I love you,” he whispers. “All of you.”

“There there,” says Magnus, and pats his ankle comfortingly. “Love you too, Ango.”

“Don’t ever bolt on us like that again,” Taako says, and leans against Magnus’s shoulder, hat brushing the top of Angus’s thigh. “You pull that shit again and I disown you, got it, pumpkin? Family don’t just bolt like that, bubbeleh.”

“I got it,” Angus says, and sniffles. He beams down at all of them through watery eyes.

“Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> catch the prompt, original version of this fic, and me on tumblr at inkedinserendipity!


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